1. Technical Field
The invention relates to fibre channel computer networks and more particularly to apparatus and method for preventing unwanted access to data at a target device when an invalid source address is detected.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Fibre channel is a general name of a new protocol for flexible information transfer. The fibre channel provides a high speed transfer of large amounts of information while providing an interconnection for various interfaces such as central processing units and data storage devices. The fibre channel permits the transporting of multiple protocols over a common physical interface. The channel protocol refers to a peripheral input/output interface to a host computer that transports large amounts of data between the host computer and the peripheral device such as a data storage system. Data transfer is handled in hardware with little or no software involvement once an input/output operation begins. A network protocol on the other hand usually supports host-to-host communication and refers to an input/output interface that usually supports many small transactions. Fibre channel provides an input/output interface that meets the needs of channel protocol and network protocols.
The fibre channel while increasing the number of devices that can be interconnected is unaware of the content or meaning of the information being transmitted on the channel. The fibre channel also increases the allowable distance between devices and increases the transfer rate of the data. This becomes a problem when one user wants to protect its private data from access from the remainder of the network. Many requests for data can be transmitted on a fibre channel and many sources of data can be connected to the return path of the fibre channel. Thus, unauthorized requests for private data can be made from anyone of the multiple requesters connected to a fibre channel. It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus and a method for protecting data sources from access by unauthorized requesters.
It would be advantageous to provide a network security technique that permits fibre channel interconnection to a worldwide network while protecting a user's private data from access without authorization.